Why Readability Is a Quiet Superpower in Learning
And why the research keeps proving it If you’ve ever watched learners’ eyes glaze over halfway through a paragraph, you already know this: When the words get harder, the learning gets slower. It’s not that people are lazy or bad at paying attention. It’s that the human brain is wired to favor whatever feels easy […]
Featured on the Visual Lounge Podcast
Mike joined Matt Pierce on The Visual Lounge podcast to talk about why L&D needs to stop thinking in courses and start thinking in campaigns. Most L&D teams create amazing content that gets consumed once and forgotten. We hit “record,” post it to SharePoint, and cross our fingers. Meanwhile, marketers take one webinar and turn […]
DOWNLOAD: 100 Ways to Repurpose Content in L&D
Update: I joined Matt Pierce on The Visual Lounge podcast to talk about why L&D needs to stop thinking in courses and start thinking in campaigns. You spent weeks building that course. Now it’s gathering dust. That webinar you poured your heart into? Watched once, forgotten. The deck that took three rounds of stakeholder review? […]
Stop Hoping They’ll Remember: Start Nudging Them to Act
Most training doesn’t fail in the classroom — it fails after it ends.Not because people don’t care, but because life gets in the way. We’ve all seen it: learners nodding through a workshop, promising to “apply it,” and then… nothing. Their inbox explodes, the meeting calendar fills, and that great new skill fades before Friday. […]
Stop Creating. Start Repurposing.
You just spent three weeks building a killer course on feedback skills. The interactions are chef’s kiss. The scenarios feel real. Learners are actually finishing it. And now your stakeholder wants something on delegation. From scratch. By next month. Here’s what nobody tells you: you’re probably sitting on a goldmine of content that could be […]
The Critical Mistake Hiding at the End of Your Training Program
You’ve spent weeks building a training program. The content is solid, the activities are engaging, the design is clean. Learners complete it. You check the box. And then nothing changes. Behaviors stay the same. Performance stays flat. Six months later, someone asks if that training actually worked, and you’re scrambling to prove ROI on something […]
ATD Core4 2025
In today’s distraction-saturated world, attention is the real currency—and L&D can’t afford to lose the fight for it. Great design and solid content aren’t enough; learners tune out unless we use sharper hooks and smarter delivery. That’s where marketing comes in. Borrowing from marketers isn’t about manipulation—it’s about learning how to package ideas in ways […]
The $0 Training Revolution: How We Turned L&D Skeptics Into Marketing Converts
What happens when you challenge L&D professionals to think like marketers instead of order takers? Magic. Pure, career-changing magic. We just wrapped up an incredible conversation with Roy de Vries on aNewSpring’s “Roy’s Training Improvement Café” podcast, and honestly? We’re still buzzing from the energy. Not because we love talking about our book Think Like a […]
Featured by the Australian Institute of Training & Development (AITD)
Mike’s article, Marketing: The Secret Weapon Your L&D Programs Need, was featured on the Australian Institute of Training & Development (AITD) website. Drawing on marketing principles, the piece explores how learning professionals can design programs that better engage learners and drive real behaviour change by understanding audiences, crafting compelling messages, and building ongoing learning campaigns. […]
Featured on Training Improvement Cafe: “Learning From Marketing”
Mike and Bianca joined aNewSpring’s Roy de Vries for Training Improvement Café Episode 3—“Learning from Marketing” This episode pulls from our book “Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro” to reimagine L&D as a creative lab, where marketing tactics—empathy mapping, audience segmentation, digital body language—fuel richer, behavior-changing learning experiences. It’s perfect for training […]